As usual when I’m writing a profile, I’m torn between wanting to tell you something about me and trying to preserve my privacy … Which is never an easy decision. Anyhow!

Hi. I’m called aellisif (yes, that’s actually one of my real names). As a reader and a writer, I’m these days strongly influenced by having trained as a literature scholar. In other words, I like me a challenge. Whether it is shining a new light on a particular character, using a storyline that I haven’t yet come across elsewhere in that particular fandom or playing with things that have been done 1000 times already, it doesn’t really matter as long as I don’t have to read pretty much the exact same story with different words over and over again. I love the unexpected twist, the tongue-in-cheek reference or someone simply wreaking havoc with stereotypical character depictions. Something along the lines of “variation is the spice of life”.

Much the same goes for my own writing; if I get bored with what I’m writing, it’s clearly not worth publishing. That also generally means that I prefer stories with a plot over those with none, long stories over short ficlets, and I am not terribly interested in PWP. Another habit I cannot stand is character bashing, which in my opinion is sloppy writing or an unwillingness of the author to properly engage with that particular character and figure out what makes them tick. I don’t mind characters not being full-blown living, breathing people, there’s seldom space in a piece of writing to properly flesh every character out. I don’t care to read stories though which basically only serve as a vehicle to transport an author’s intense dislike of a certain character. It doesn’t matter whether that character is the bad guy in the original; real people have reasons for acting like they do, and so should characters. If an author can’t be bothered to figure those reasons out, I can’t be bothered to read their story.

Chiming in with that, while I may have certain preferences with regard to pairings or depictions of characters, as long as it’s not “and now this character is EVIL”, you can throw pretty much anything at me. Reading and writing, for me, are ways of exploring different aspects of a particular fandom from different angles, and very few things make me happier than having my view of a particular character completely turned around by a good piece of writing. If you can make it work, I’ll roll with anything.

What else is there to say? I write reviews, but since they tend to be extensive, I don’t often get around to writing them. If you see a review with my name from someone who was not logged in, though, that was not me, because I always log in to leave reviews.

If you want to, feel free to contact me via e-mail or PM, and prepare for a bit of a wait – being in full-time work, fanfiction necessarily often takes a backseat in my life. I will get back to you though, at some point :-)

For my readers’ convenience some information about my stories:

Single pieces not connected, or only loosely connected to other pieces (which basically means that there are some thoughts and musings which happen to appear in other pieces as well):

Being Takeru

Pieces belonging to a series in recommended reading order:

Highly reactive – Adrenaline

Highly reactive – The element of Surprise

Highly reactive – Nitric oxide

Highly reactive – Endorphins

More to come. Not sure yet when, though. If you’re interested in keeping track, just click on “follow” :-)